Ghosts in the Machine

Mark Honeychurch - 29 April 2024

As we’ve just had two weeks of school holidays, I’ve just spent a week in Australia. Sadly during that time a new set of Mormon missionaries were unable to visit me at home to try to convert me. But, don’t despair, they’ve already messaged me again and we’ve arranged to meet on Saturday. At this point I’m not sure if they seriously think they have a chance to win me over, or if I’m just a sport for them - but I enjoy the conversations, so I’ll continue to let them visit me at home and take a couple of hours of my time.

On the flights to and from Brisbane, I was able to watch a couple of interesting documentaries - one, called Hidden Letters, about a secret women’s script, that allowed Chinese women a hundred or more years ago to write about how awful it was to be a woman in such an oppressive country - foot binding, being kept indoors, etc. What was clever about this documentary was that, despite the overt theme being about the plight of women prior to Communism, much of the footage that was used managed to convey a second theme - that, despite claims to the contrary, China is still not a great place for women to live, and Mao Zedong’s promised equality is a long way from becoming a reality.

The second documentary, another enjoyable one, was called Beyond Utopia, and it focused on people defecting from North Korea. One of the interesting things in this movie, at least for me, was the person who was helping people from South Korea once they’d managed to cross the border from North Korea into China - where there’s still a long, arduous journey before defectors are able to reach a safe country such as Thailand. The helper, although he was doing an amazing job, was a Christian Pastor, and in the documentary there’s one scene after he’s met up with a family he’s helping to reach South Korea where he says a prayer for their safe crossing from Laos to Thailand, and instructs them on how to say Amen at the end of the prayer - which is needed as this family are obviously atheist (beyond, to an extent, them seeing the Kim family as divine). Seeing this, and assuming that many thankful escapees are likely to convert to Christianity, join this Pastor’s church in South Korea and spend many years paying a 10% tithe, I can’t shake the thought that helping out people in need is likely to result in a net profit for this person. The motivation for helping may be pure, but the practical result is likely that more money ends up in his pocket at the end of the day than the initial cost to help out, by paying and bribing “brokers” (human traffickers), policemen and border guards. I guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But maybe I’m just too cynical when it comes to religion!

In this week’s newsletter, Dan Ryan is asking everyone to help out with the mysterious mystery of the mysteriously misbehaving doorbell. Craig has written a round-up of some weird stuff going on in conspiracy circles recently. Bronwyn has written about the imminent demise of hair care MLM Monat, and also about another MLM she’s been keeping an eye on - and this one has some of the weirdest pseudoscientific claims I’ve seen in a while. Finally, as I’ve been on holiday I’ve managed to find some alternative medicine from outside of New Zealand to complain about - my first international complaint since I submitted one in Canada back in 2019. So I’ve written up a little about where you go to complain about therapeutic claims in Australia, and some of the frustrating things I found about nonsense claims people are allowed to make about herbal products over there.

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